As reported back in May, McAfee has released their online backup solution, powered by Mozy. The official announcement comes from the Mozy blog.

So why would someone chose to buy the $59.99 / year McAfee product over the $54.45 ($46.29 with promotional code) Mozy service?

Perhaps users may be more familiar with the McAfee brand, or already have McAfee’s antivirus software installed, making the online backup service an easy add-on (using the antivirus software as a distribution channel).

McAfee, the number 2 computer security company, plans to team up with Mozy’s parent corporation, EMC, to offer online PC backup services in the second half of 2009. Similar to Mozy’s Home service, McAfee plans to offer consumers unlimited Web-based backup for personal computers for $50 to $60 a year.

This move by McAfee is a direct resonse to Symantec’s previously announced Online Backup service. This move shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone: a few years ago McAfee beta-tested a backup service that they had hoped to launch, but that service was never brought to market. Instead of reinventing the wheel, McAfee chose to partner with Mozy.

Earlier this year, HP learned how difficult it is to run their own online backup service, and the troubles overcame their “Upline” backup service. In the online backup world, currently dominated by Mozy and Carbonite, McAfee learned from HP’s mistake, when they chose to not build their own service.